April 9th is the last day of the Hong Kong Web3 Carnival, which also marks the end of Hong Kong Blockchain Week. As lively as in previous years, Hong Kong once again gathered a group of crypto people in the name of Web3. In the diversified collision of retail investors, projects, KOLs, VC/PE and even government officials, the future of Hong Kong and crypto is also constantly unfolding.
Among them, short essays have become an indispensable part of large-scale events. Participants may talk about trends with witty remarks, or point out the key points in a concise and concise manner, or simply vent their emotions. Perhaps the opinions are not consistent, but in the unique Huashan Sword Contest, spectators who failed to experience it can also get a glimpse of the current hot spots and perceive the emotions and atmosphere of the crypto circle under the review of the current status and development trend of the industry.
In this regard, Gyro Finance specially summarizes some short essays on the X platform, hoping that the Hong Kong Web3 in the eyes of participants can trigger more thinking.
Dov Wo@dov wo
VC perspective on the Hong Kong conference (full of bias):
1. In a bull market, products are not important, narratives and emotions are more important. Meme has repeatedly proved this point. At least half of the financing money is used to pull the market.
2. The most core abilities of this round of bull market: trading ability and shouting ability. If you don’t have trading ability, please practice shouting ability. I am also helping some project parties find KOLs for promotion. Welcome to take the business orders I give. There are many projects that binance and OKX have invested in that cannot find suitable domestic/overseas promotion channels. False prosperity/buying is just a necessity.
3. The status of VC is getting worse and worse, with slow unlocking and high valuations, and retail investors don’t recognize it. If they cannot bring additional resources to the project (such as exchange relationships, resources and communities in a specific region, economic model design, promotion capabilities, etc.), most pure financial investment VCs can only be a big complaint. Take a project that recently approached me as an example. The valuation of the KOL round was lower than that of VC, and the unlocking was better than that of VC. (This project was led by a top Western VC)
KOL > VC is not groundless, it is real. So I am also working on a small boutique KOL agency to sell shovels.
4. The most popular activities are Berachain, Solana, and BTC; the ETH ecosystem is relatively less active, and a big meme is Layer 69 (Solana's own funny spoof video of ETH)
5. Side Events There are a lot of people, and there may be hundreds of Side Events at this event. On the contrary, there were few people at the main venue; project owners may need to reflect on whether the expensive booths at the main venue are still worth it; for example, Berachain and Solana did not have booths at the main venue, but held their own activities. OKX has booths and activities, which is the top status, while Binance continues to have no activities.
6. Ordinary people must become KOLs and find their own positioning. For example, if you want to shout "dog", just shout "dog", and if you do a good job of analysis, just do a good job of analysis. You can get good business orders. I asked KOLs who shouted "dog" to shout orders, and the price of each order ranged from 200U to 2000U. VCs who can't shout orders can't survive, and KOLs who can't shout orders can't make money. If you have traffic, a large number of project owners will actively seek cooperation with you, and you will have better information and more resources. Please read the second point again. Question the teacher who leads orders, understand the teacher who leads orders, and become a teacher who leads orders.
7. This year, there are fewer people talking about compliance and licenses in HK, and more people talking about trading and accumulating resources (it may also be because I have reached a higher stage and can understand and participate). The largest booths at the main venue are OKX and DWF. Everyone knows who has resources and who has money.
Ethan yu@EthanYu2020
Drank for 2 days and listened to some awesome:
1. Chinese institution Fomo Bitcoin ecology and Restaking, European and American/overseas gene institutions Fomo Solana DePin, a small number of institutions Fomo Cosmos ecology-related Bearchain, some institutions were trapped in GameFi in the last round, so now they can only continue to push hard, but all of them ended up in the same way and had to be cut, and the valuations were simply outrageous.
2. Almost all of them agree that there are too many gold dogs listed on Solana, and the get-rich-quick effect has been continuing. In the past few days, the local dog turnover that went to Base has returned to Solana.
3. It’s not that KOLs play a bigger role than VCs, but because KOLs have more flexible funds and can call orders and delete pushes at will, and the unlocking method is more friendly. What can you do if institutions call orders? On the other hand, institutions are not stupid and have a lot of money. You start with a valuation of 100 million US dollars, and it will take 3 years and 36 months to completely exit. You don’t list on Binance or OKX. Are you stupid or are institutions stupid if you let me invest 500,000 US dollars now?
4. There are indeed many newcomers and people who want to enter the industry. Young people are proactive, enthusiastic, and eager to learn. They don’t have any industry baggage. If they are optimistic about the all-in, they will do it. However, there are not enough newcomers, so the bull market is still in its early stages.
NP Hard @xingpt
HK Conference Mini Essay:
1. The threshold for entrepreneurship continues to rise in this cycle. New domestic wild teams can only go to make local dogs or do fur-pulling studios. A few are doing Bitcoin ecological projects, and it is basically difficult to raise big money.
2. The confusion of Chinese project parties: How can we get European and American funds to invest in us?/The confusion of domestic funds: How can we invest in European and American projects?
3. The most prosperous Chinese practitioners in the currency circle: secondary big households and top kols.
Allen Ding@0x_Allending
I have been too busy in HK these days, so I will quickly share a few opinions, hoping they will be helpful to you.
1. The market is still bullish, firmly bullish.
2. ETH/BTC will definitely reverse. The current exchange rate is under pressure mainly because the probability of passing the ETF in May is low + EF is in a lawsuit + lack of new narratives. But I still think that ETH is the only public chain that can undertake the financial needs of large funds and has the best developer atmosphere. After substantial water release, funds will definitely still choose ETH, and Eigenalyer is about to be released, which should lead to a wave of AVS bulls.
3. Solana's own strategy is fine, and it has become my largest holding of alt. But there are too many emotional air coins in the ecosystem, and Ore has recently made it impossible to transfer normally. I am currently focusing on DePIN. Ebunker has launched a DePIN financial platform that allows users to better participate in the DePIN project.
4. If you like to speculate on emotions, you can take a look at other layer1 ecological opportunities below. Foundations are brewing their own meme season.
5. Once again, relying on news to speculate on coins in a bull market is the highest utilization rate of funds. As long as you have a reliable source of information, you can breathe and make money. How to have a reliable source of information, make more friends, and make more reliable friends.
6. The biggest alpha comes from the process of low-liquidity assets becoming high-liquidity assets. I am paying close attention to the NFT and meme fields recently. Welcome to the comments area for recommendations.
7. Everyone is doing Layer, especially Layer2.
8. The cryptocurrency circle is a makeshift team, and it is all a setup. As long as you can attract a few key angel investors, and then a few large overseas institutions, and get one of Binance/OK, congratulations, you have a 1 billion valuation.
Kay Capital@keyahayek
1. I used the points I saved for a year to book a hotel for a few hundred yuan, and the project party I invested in stayed at the Grand Hyatt for 5,000 yuan.
2. The investors patched up, and the project party bought cars and houses.
0xNatalie@0xNatalie860
—《What I Saw and Heard at the 2024 Web3 Hong Kong Conference》
Bitcoin Ecosystem: There are many Bitcoin ecological projects, some doing transactions, some doing asset issuance agreements, and some doing mining machines. They are all Chinese projects, but the gap is quite large, both in terms of technology and products.
There are a lot of people in CKB activities. They will focus on the lightning network next, and the ecological construction is faster than expected. It feels like everyone has/has held CKB, and most people are optimistic.
Solana Ecosystem: The main project I saw was the DePIN project, AI+DePIN mining layer by layer. It is expected that mining equipment similar to sol mobile phones will emerge in an endless stream, such as watches, bracelets, rings and various AR wearable devices. Unlike mobile phones, they record health data and let users choose whether to share it with data projects to earn income.
AI: Mainly related to privacy and data, using AI to process various data. Of course, there are many old projects that have switched to AI. The amazing thing is that there are not as many AI projects as I imagined, and I didn’t see any AI projects by Chinese people.
TON Ecosystem: TON has a big vision. It can be seen that it wants to build an ecosystem. I heard that there is a lot of support for ecological projects. TON’s booth is right in front of the door, and there are many people at the booth every day.
The last few points: Many payment/web2.5 projects have a deeper understanding of web3 than I thought; foreigners are more optimistic about the duration of the bull market than Chinese people; the OKX booth is very lively, but foreigners are not interested, and most of the users are still Chinese; games and meme projects are very good, and handsome men and beautiful women and cosplayers are invited to promote the whole venue, it is hard not to pay attention.
Caesar On The Moon@czreth
Experiences from the 3-day Hong Kong Web3 Carnival:
1. The Solana ecosystem is dominated by European and American retail investors and institutions, and the main push is various Meme coins. The most common one seen in Hong Kong Web3 is $PENG. At present, this coin has risen 10X and will fall back, almost losing all the gains.
2. Chinese VCs are now chasing the superiority of Bitcoin. In addition to attracting traditional investors to enter BTC, VCs are now beginning to panic FOMO into the BTC ecosystem and start to create various Bitcoin second-layer and programmable UTXO projects.
3. The TON ecosystem is dominated by Europeans, with a strong FOMO and community-driven color. The most interesting one is notcoin. A large number of airdrop/click mining/spinach/game projects are emerging on Telegram.
4. DePin and RWA are now the first choice for traditional IT companies to transform into the Web3 track. We have seen projects such as Wifi distributed Mesh network and decentralized charging piles. Currently, they are all focusing on the Southeast Asian market, with Singapore as the main base.
5. A large number of newcomers have entered the market. A group of newcomers with high education and high initiative are working hard to develop their dreams in Web3. Local projects in Hong Kong and Singapore have also begun to appear. However, the general low cognition of newcomers and the general lack of fighting spirit of Hong Kong and Singaporeans are also very obvious. Entrepreneurs in Shenzhen and Hangzhou can meet and chat at 3 o'clock to make money, and the only motivation for young people in Hong Kong or Singapore to come out at this time is probably X guns.
6. Hong Kong is still an international business center and a concentration of old money in Greater China. Although it has recently been suppressed by Europe and the United States and other countries, it still insists on working hard.
7. Traditional crypto VCs are being squeezed out by old money and the newly emerging DeFun and community capital. The new generation of VCs is growing through social media, which is very similar to Silicon Valley, and Web3 is developing even faster.
8. Airdrops are rapidly becoming a means for project owners to open up the market and capture users. With the development of the bull market, there will be more and more airdrop projects, and the game between project owners and airdrop studios will become more and more intense.
JinseFinance
